Dear friends
I don’t know how you are dealing with the lent – season?
Are you fasting or doing anything different in your spiritual disciplines and in your walk with GOD?
Me, to be honest, I have never done anything special for GOD during the lent season, I have done a lot of fasting during all years since I have been walking with THE LORD, even last year, I can honestly say that I have spent more days fasting than eating “normal”, because I wanted to get closer to GOD and wanted my life to change in all areas and aspects and wanted to surrender everything to HIM, literally everything!
However, last week on Pancake day, I was speaking with colleagues and I hadn’t even known what pancake day in the UK is all about.
In case you don’t have it in your country, “Pancake Day, or Shrove Tuesday, is the traditional feast day before the start of Lent on Ash Wednesday. Lent – the 40 days leading up to Easter – was traditionally a time of fasting and on Shrove Tuesday, Anglo-Saxon Christians went to confession and were “shriven” (absolved from their sins). A bell would be rung to call people to confession. This came to be called the “Pancake Bell” and is still rung today.
Shrove Tuesday always falls 47 days before Easter Sunday, so the date varies from year to year and falls between February 3 and March 9. In 2021 Shrove Tuesday will fall on February 16th.
Shrove Tuesday was the last opportunity to use up eggs and fats before embarking on the Lenten fast and pancakes are the perfect way of using up these ingredients” – found at https://www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/Pancake-Day/
So this was on Pancake Day, and I thought, ooooh, lent, and I thought what I just had shared with you, that I had never participated in the “official” fasting during lent.
I then forgot about it again, until the next day, when another colleague, one who I get along with very well and he knows that I am a Christian and that I take my faith very seriously, so he was asking me on the day when the fast was supposed to begin if I was going to give up anything for lent.
This was already the second “prompt” and I decided to take these 2 prompts as GOD asking me to give up something for lent.
I thought about it.
And I thought, I love to fast – I mean not love the hunger, but love the results, I almost got used to it, so I thought I should do something different, something more sacrificial, something that would be truly hard for me to give up.
2 things came to mind and they hurt – deeply – that’s how I knew that they were the things GOD wanted me to give up.
They are my 2 “drugs” if you will – the 2 I don’t ever want be without – they are coffee and salt.
My colleague also had 2, alcohol and sex (as in sleeping around before marriage) – and he also said they are 2 very, very hard ones for him to give up. Yes, he is a Christian, and he knows right from wrong, but he is also still very young and hasn’t been fully convicted by THE HOLY SPIRIT that it’s truly necessary for him to overcome his flesh – I respect his journey and where he is at currently, and he respects mine and we often have interesting conversations….
However, this was a lot to commit to for both of us, so we decided to sleep over it and talk about it the next day.
When we came back the next day, I had decided to accept the challenge and I already felt very miserable, because I hadn’t had a coffee that morning. And I didn’t even felt like eating anything at all, because I felt as if it would literally taste like absolutely nothing without salt – in other words: I felt miserable and was already in the middle of the withdrawal battle!
My colleague had decided to check out – more or less – without even trying. Well, he said he would try a little, but then over the weekend, he folded, or literally rolled over and gave in to temptation in both areas…
But he checked in with me every day and I had done well for 1 week.
Until?
This morning, I had to go somewhere before work, and there is a large supermarket close by and I decided to go in there and buy a sandwich for later…..
When people who are asking for money sit in front of supermarkets, I sometimes, as being led to, before I go inside, ask them if there is something they would like me to bring them, something from the store and this morning, there was a man sitting outside and I was led to ask him.
Guess what he wanted?
Correct.
Out of all things in this huge supermarket, he wanted a coffee.
I agreed to bring him one.
At the same time I felt very tortured and I was saying to GOD “really, FATHER? I can’t have a coffee and now YOU are asking me to buy a coffee for someone else and give it away?”
I was suffering…..
Even on my way there, in the morning, I was thinking, I am so tired, I wish I could have had a coffee and present myself better at this appointment… and then, when I was inside the supermarket, it seemed like all I saw was coffee – withdrawal!
But I decided to be obedient and after I had bought my sandwich, I lined up for coffee.
To be fair, it took ages until I finally held the cup in my hand.
The girl serving me at the cafeteria was new and she had to go find her colleague and ask her about the till and pretty much everything, and the queue was long.
But I got there.
Had the coffee in my hand, went to the entrance to give it to the man – but he was no longer sitting there.
Here I was, standing there with a freshly made, delicious and also expensive coffee which I hadn’t bought for me and wanted to give away – and he was nowhere in sight.
I even went looking for him in the nearby park.
I even thought if there is someone else in the park looking as if they could use a coffee, I will give it to them.
This is the only time I have ever seen this park completely empty!!!
Nobody!
I was then wondering if GOD wanted me to throw the coffee away and waste the money, and then I decided that I had tried honestly and had wanted to be obedient and that I hadn’t bought the coffee for me or out of weakness and that this is a treat from GOD and that HE wants me to have it for my efforts.
And I drank it.
Perhaps the best coffee of my entire life 🙂
I then kept walking to the close by pedestrian zone and guess whom I saw?
The man who had asked me for a coffee!
I still had the empty cup in my hand and I was about to challenge him why he hadn’t waited for me, but then I realized how miserable and severely withdrawing he looked, and I left it – he didn’t even seem to recognize me!
And in the moment when I walked by, someone came up to him and gave him a coffee they had just bought for him, it was a Christian lady, as I heard her speak with him about GOD.
When I came to work afterwards, we had discussions about it – with 2 colleagues – the one who had brought up the lent-challenge, and he said I failed GOD’s test.
Another colleague said that it was a different case and I hadn’t bought it for myself and had wanted to be strong and even be obedient, she encouraged me to keep going.
Me, I compared it to when Abraham seriously was willing to sacrifice Isaac and in the last moment, GOD provided a ram – and I interpreted it as having passed the test as GOD wanted me to have the coffee.
But my colleague compared it to Eve in the garden and was adamant that I had failed GOD’s test and that GOD had wanted me to throw the coffee away.
What to you think?
Please comment #team Isaac or #team Eve – and please don’t take this all too seriously, because for me, it was just one more proof that GOD is a mercyful, good, good FATHER with a great sense of humor!!!
I hope and pray that this will inspire, encourage, bless and heal you.
And that THE LORD will bless you richly in all areas of your life, that HE will keep you and shine HIS face upon you, and bring you PEACE. In JESUS’ name I pray. AMEN.
Witness for Jesus 